Philological Study Of Ancient Uygur Language Medical Literature

Old Uyghur medical manuscripts have a great importance in Central Asian philology. Hitherto-identified Old Uyghur medical fragments are120, among them77fragments are preserved in Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (the Berlin Turfan collection), Germany, while19fragments are housed in Institute of Oriental manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences (the St. Petersburg collection), Russia. Of them29manuscripts are written in Old Uyghur,13manuscripts are in Brahmi, and only one is in Syriac script, besides them there are also Uyghur-Sanskrit parallel medical texts written in Brahmi script.The longest Old Uyghur medical text is composed of200lines; the shortest one contains only2-3lines. According to the form of the manuscripts, they are written on the booklet sheets and scroll. The most of the medical texts is written in the cursive and half-cursive type of Old Uyghur script, some of them are also written in regular type and half-regular type script. Aside from the medical texts, some Buddhist texts also show medical terminology and passages of medical content.Old Uyghur medical texts involve wide range of content, including Old Uyghur medical theory and practice. Their content is related to different kinds of diseases and their symptoms, diagnoses and treatments, medical preparation and preservation. For its medical value, Old Uyghur medical manuscripts are very unique source for better understanding of the Old Uyghur medical culture and history as well as Central Asian civilization.Research on Old Uyghur medical texts started in the beginning of twentieth century, when the Turkish scholar R. R. Arat published results of his research on the Old Uyghur medical texts kept in the Berlin Turfan collection (see Arat1930,1932). And at the beginning of21st century the German scholars Peter Zieme and Dieter Maue have published further medical texts from the Berlin Turfan collection (see Zieme2007, Maue2008). However, since then no systematic study on Old Uyghur medical texts has been carried out. In last century Central Asian Philology made a great progress, publishing large number of new materials, also making clear progress in research methods. Therefore, a systematic research based on the published and unpublished medical texts in Old Uyghur, reflecting the progress in Central Asian philology became a desideratum. This is why we have selected the philological study of Old Uyghur medical texts as a topic of our dissertation.The dissertation mainly deals with96fragments of Old Uyghur medical texts and further5non-medical texts. Under the framework of philological study, this dissertation presented the transcription, transliteration, Chinese translation and philological and linguistic notes, trying to illustrate morphological and syntactic features descriptions of the language of Old Uyghur medical texts. In addition, it explains the semantic meaning, structural features and etymology of medical terms in Old Uyghur medical texts.The dissertation consists of four parts:introduction, chapters on text edition, linguistic description and analysis of texts, conclusion and appendix.The introductory part includes the aim and significance of this study, the research background, research methods, the range of the study, and also illustrations of symbols and abbreviations.The second part, the main body of this dissertation, includes following four chapters:Chapter one:The Old Uyghur medical texts and their classification. In this chapter, firstly, an introduction was given to discovery, preservation and spelling features of Old Uyghur medical texts; secondly, the classification of Old Uyghur medical texts based on its script, content and origin was provided.Chapter two:A Philological study on the Old Uyghur medical texts. In this chapter, the selected96fragments are first divided into5groups on the basis of their origin and content, and then presented the transcription, transliteration, Chinese translation and philological notes. The notes mainly focus on the lexical meaning, etymology, morphological and syntactical properties of the text.Chapter three:Structural features of Old Uyghur medical texts. This chapter includes detailed phonetic and phonological descriptions of the sound system of the language of Old Uyghur medical texts, providing rather detailed descriptions and classification on the phonetic and morphological changes as seen in the language of medical texts, it also provides analysis on the phrases and sentences. Aside from this, this chapter also discusses the word order, subject clause, non-subject clause, complex sentences etc.Chapter four:An analysis of medical terms in the Old Uyghur medical texts. This chapter mainly discusses medical terms occurring in the Old Uyghur medical texts, focusing on their semantics, structure, etymology. Meanwhile, attentions are also paid to loanwords in Old Uyghur medical texts, closely looking at the route of the terms get borrowed. In this chapter the semantics, structure and etymological features of medical terms found in no-medical texts were also discussed.The conclusion part gives a brief summary on the phonetic system, morpho-syntactical characteristics of the language of Old Uyghur medical texts, introducing main points which were concluded through analysis in the main body of this dissertation.The appendix consists of three indexes:the glossary of Old Uyghur medical texts, the classified index of Old Uyghur medical terms and a facsimile of Old Uyghur medical fragments. Indeed, the appendix is one of the important results of this study, is an indispensable part of this dissertation.